Rick Rescorla, a solider in Vietman in the '60s, died in the Sept. 11 attacks after leading thousands of people to safety. He is the subject of the San Francisco Opera's "Heart of a Soldier," having its world premiere in September, 10 years after the attacks.

Photo: Peter Arnett, Associated Press 1965

Rick Rescorla, a solider in Vietman in the '60s, died in the Sept....

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James B. Stewart, author of "Heart of a Soldier," which has been adapted into an opera for the San Francisco Opera.

Photo: Simon & Schuster

James B. Stewart, author of "Heart of a Soldier," which has been...

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Thomas Hampson will sing the part of Rick Riscorla in the San Francisco Opera's "Heart of a Soldier."
Ran on: 08-21-2011
Thomas Hampson will portray Rick Rescorla in the opera's production of &quo;Heart of a Soldier.&quo;

Like millions of other Americans, James B. Stewart spent the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks in a daze of stunned disbelief. A Pulitzer Prize-winning business writer for the New Yorker, he was grateful for a call from his editor, David Remnick, asking him to do some reporting on the impact of the attacks on Wall Street firms.

"The call jolted me back to reality, and the fact that I had a job to do," Stewart recalled. "It was a relief to have something concrete to do.

"I made some extremely modest contributions to our coverage, most of which was focused on Cantor Fitzgerald. But someone mentioned in passing that at Morgan Stanley, which was the biggest employer in the building, everyone had gotten out. It was an anomaly - the companies on the floors above and below had lost many people - and it stuck in my head."

Following that tip led Stewart not just to one story, but to a complex of interlocking narratives, both heroic and romantic, which he explored first in a feature article for the magazine and then in his 2002 book "Heart of a Soldier."

Now that story has taken yet another turn, becoming an opera with a score by composer Christopher Theofanidis and librettist Donna DiNovelli. The work, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, has its world premiere Sept. 10, one day before the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

What Stewart encountered on poking around during the aftermath was a mysterious tale of valor and discipline.

"I asked some questions, and it didn't take any time to hear that there was some guy who had military experience, and had been obsessive about training people. People didn't know his name, but everybody said he was single-handedly responsible for getting people out."

The man in question was Rick Rescorla, a British-born ex-military officer who had served with U.S. forces in Vietnam before becoming head of security for Morgan Stanley. In the wake of the first attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, he instituted evacuation procedures for the company's employees.

On Sept. 11, Rescorla shepherded his charges - more than 3,000 of them - out of the building, keeping their spirits up with patriotic songs and Cornish marches. Then he turned around and went back into the building to search for stragglers. He was never seen again.

That was the story that Stewart thought he was pursuing when he took a train into suburban New Jersey to talk with Rescorla's widow, Susan. Instead, he discovered a fairy-tale romance between two middle-aged soul mates who found each other all too briefly after giving up on love.

"Susan was talking not about his heroism, but about this love affair that had descended on her late in life. She started talking, and within minutes she was crying, and I was crying.

"I looked at my notebook later on and there was nothing in it, because all we did was trade the Kleenex box back and forth."

A third aspect of the story emerged after Stewart's New Yorker article appeared. He got a call from Dan Hill - Rescorla's lifelong friend who had served alongside him first in post-colonial Rhodesia and then in Vietnam - proposing a get-together over dinner.

"I thought this story was over," said Stewart. "It's very rare for someone to approach you with more after an article runs.

"But we met at a steak house, and he started telling me about his and Rick's story. I was totally mesmerized. I came out onto the sidewalk and called my editor at Simon and Schuster then and there and said, 'This has to be a book.' "

Weaving together those three strands - Rescorla's relationships with both Hill and his wife, as well as the story of what happened at the World Trade Center - was one thing in a full-length book. But opera has its own time scale - more expansive in some areas, brutally efficient in others - that made the new version take on a different aspect.

"I'm not an opera fanatic, but I have a subscription to the Metropolitan Opera and I do love music. And I started thinking, 'If this was "La Bohème," what would the acts be?' Suddenly it didn't seem so far-fetched."

When he saw DiNovelli's libretto, Stewart says, he was surprised and impressed at how much it included. "In my 'Bohème' version I'd had to cut a lot of the story out. I'd given up the whole Africa section, and Rick's childhood experiences on D-Day. But she got all that in there."